Quakers hope to wrangle the Broncs

Still winless Penn seeks initial victory against a Rider team that is on a five-game skid of its own

Senior Caitlin Slover (right) will need to hit her offensive stride against Rider, Saturday, for Penn to snap its seven-game skid.

Senior Caitlin Slover (right) will need to hit her offensive stride against Rider, Saturday, for Penn to snap its seven-game skid. (Alex Remnick/DP Senior Photographer )

They’re still waiting for a win.

The 0-7 Penn women’s basketball team is off to its worst start since the 1995-96 season. With a Saturday showdown with Rider rapidly approaching, the Quakers are looking to finally break their losing streak.

“I think we are all definitely ready for a win — we’ve been ready,” sophomore forward Jess Knapp said. “We haven’t been happy with the outcomes … but we’ve been happy with our effort.”

Yet according to first-year coach Mike McLaughlin, the team needs to apply even more effort towards correcting all aspects of its game if it hopes to come away with a win against the Broncs (2-7).

“All the little things,” McLaughlin said, “the rebounding, the taking care of the ball, to making shots — a lot of them have to come into play for us to have a chance.”

While Rider is coming off a five-game losing streak of its own, the Broncs come to Saturday’s matchup with a slightly stronger offense than the Quakers. Rider has recorded a .360 field goal percentage this season, while Penn enters this weekend’s contest shooting only 32.5 percent.

Rider owes this offensive advantage to junior guard Cintella Spotwood, who averages 12.9 points per game.

Spotwood is also a threat from three point territory, averaging a .341 shooting percentage beyond the arc.

To counter Spotwood’s strong shooting, McLaughlin is looking for his squad’s defensive ability to carry over onto the offensive side of the court.

Although the Quakers’ defense has surrendered an average of 61.5 points to their opponents, it has also averaged 23.4 defensive rebounds and 6.3 steals per game, which will be helpful against a Rider squad that averages 26.4 turnovers per game.

“When teams have gone [on] a little bit of a run — 6-0, 8-0 advantage — we haven’t translated back into a good offensive team if they made some shots on us,” the coach said.

With one of the team’s leading scorers, Jerin Smith, out with an injury, McLaughlin will be looking to senior co-captain Caitlin Slover to put the ball in the net.

“I think she has done a great job all around,” he said. “She’s played the game really hard, we’re asking her now to step up.”

Defensively, Slover will have to contend with Rider’s Sarah Homan. The sophomore center has established her position as the Broncs top blocker with an astounding 11 blocks on the season.

According to McLaughlin, junior guard Kim Adams is on a steady path to improvement and will be an integral part of the team’s offense as well.

In order to put points up on the scoreboard, however, the offensive talent will need to exercise discipline and aggression on both sides of the ball.

“We’re going to come out aggressive, the more aggressive we can play the better a chance we have,” he said. “Every time we’ve been aggressive, it’s translated down on the offensive end.”

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Comments

alandoland
Sat, 01/30/2010 - 3:47am

Throughout the broadcast, we

Throughout the broadcast, we were treated to previews of CBC shows “The Week the Women Went” and “The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives.”I was considering hara-kiri until the Quaker Oats commercial featuring a man who chooses a healthy diet emc training because of the people he loves. Wow! A man who feeds himself and puts his family first. Such men do exist (I live with one), but you rarely see them on TV.So here I am harping on something I started harping on more exam 70-236 than thirty years ago. If the CBC curling cast is an example of “where the learning is,” we learn that, in popular culture, women are still defined by their reproductive roles and their relationships to men. We learn that men’s curling is more “interesting” and that women “get” to curl only if they have supportive husbands. We learn that women are mcpd still responsible for family meals but also get to work in offices. (That’s a bit of “progress” from thirty years ago.)aybe this is reality for many women who watch TV and advertisers and commentators are simply holding up a mirror to their lives. Maybe there’s just no way out of what bell hooks calls our “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”

rashoodollison
Thu, 02/25/2010 - 11:57am

“One thing we’ve done

“One thing we’ve done really well so far is staying together as a unit,” Adams said. “The coaching staff and the captains have done a great job in trying to keep everyone positive.” affordable degree | fast degree | online diploma | free diploma | Corllins University


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